The Supermodel's Best Friend (A Romantic Comedy) (21 page)

“Nice key action,” Betty said to Jaynette.
“Very retro.”

“It gets me where I want to go,” Jaynette
replied, wiggling the keys at her, giving her a suggestive
look.

Betty grinned. “Smart woman. Excellent
priorities.”

While Shawn loaded up the bags, Lucy noticed
Fawn was frozen in place, biting her lip, staring behind them into
the darkness.

“We’re just going to Mendocino,” Lucy said.
“You can come back tonight if you want to. Or tomorrow
morning.”

“I won’t be able to come back. Not after
this.” She wiped away a tear. “I am such an idiot.”

“Don’t talk that way.” Lucy got her into the
old car. Put her seatbelt on for her, pulled her head down to her
shoulder. “Though if you throw up on me I’ll never forgive
you.”

Fawn sighed, sagging against Lucy, and they
drove off through the trees. Hopefully half of Jaynette’s attention
would be enough to master the sharp curves of the road through the
mountains to the coast, because Betty couldn’t keep her hands off
of her. While Fawn cried silently at her shoulder, Betty and
Jaynette giggled and stroked one another, obliviously happy with
their own moment.

Maybe marriage does ruin everything
,
Lucy thought. She and Dan had been happy together for years.
Unexciting, maybe, but peaceful. It wasn’t until Lucy pressured him
to make it official that they began working more, going to bed at
different times, eating meals alone.

The car swerved and barely regained the road
before an oncoming pickup sped past them. Jaynette squealed,
slapping Betty’s hand away, and they continued on their way.

“I’m going to puke now,” Fawn said
quietly.

Lucy clutched Jaynette’s shoulder. “Pull
over.”

With a squeal of tires in the gravel, the car
slid off the road. Lucy fumbled with the door and pulled Fawn out
with her, grabbing her before she tried to spill her guts into the
oncoming traffic instead of the bushes.

Three miserable minutes later, Fawn crawled
back into the car.

“Any water?” Lucy asked the others.

“Cold coffee from this morning?” Jaynette
held up her travel mug, but Fawn shook her head.

“We’ll get something in town. But
thanks.”

A half hour later, they drove into the
picturesque coastal village of Mendocino, a wealthy enclave of
B&Bs, jewelry stores, art galleries, restaurants, and
boutiques. The sun was sinking down to the Pacific horizon, hazy
behind the bank of fog.

Lucy had been texting Krista, and finally a
reply came through. “Not good. They’ve gone back to the resort
already.” She squeezed Fawn’s knee. “I’m sorry. Her phone was off.
Did you want her to get your mom on the line?”

Fawn moaned and put her face in her hands. “I
can’t talk to her right now. I’m not sure what I’m doing.”

Lucy addressed the cheerful women in the
front seat. “Can we just keep driving for a while?”

“I was headed up to Fort Bragg,” Jaynette
said, “but with all the twists and turns on Highway 1, I don’t
think your friend is up to it.”

“I’m fine,” Fawn said. “I need a minute to
figure out a plan. Please.”

In ten minutes Lucy and Fawn were sliding
back and forth along the back seat with each bend in the road. The
Pacific, cold and vast and wild, crashed into the rough coast to
their left.

“I take it back. I need to get out,” Fawn
said.

“There’s a B and B in Pajaro. Nice bar.
Popular with the locals,” Jaynette said. “Right up ahead.”

“There’s a vacancy sign,” Betty said as they
drove into the lot, fondling Jaynette’s thigh.

“This will do,” Lucy said. “Thanks for the
ride.”

The lovebirds didn’t hesitate to dump them at
the front door. Within two minutes Fawn and Lucy stood alone with
the bags at their feet, eyeing the old Victorian on the cliff,
while Jaynette’s Subaru zoomed away. Loud music from a bar on the
ocean side drifted across the broken asphalt of the parking
lot.

Luckily, Fawn threw up before they got
inside.

* * *

Miles sipped his potato soup in the Snowy
Egret and thought about white bras and cotton panties, bracing
himself to see Alex come in with Lucy on his arm for dinner. On
their “date.” Pretending to “like” each other.

Shit
.

He’d been waiting for two hours, chewing
slowly, eating a series of pale appetizers, plotting his moves. How
he would seduce her with his bedroom eyes from afar while Alex
bored her to death. He wore the shirt his ex had said made him look
handsome, and he kept looking down to make sure he hadn’t spilled
anything on it.

I’m pathetic
.

Just as he was signaling the waitress for a
coconut water refill, Huntley burst into the restaurant, his eyes
wild. He saw Miles and rushed over. “Have you seen her?”

Miles almost said,
I can’t get her out of
my mind
, then realized he must mean Fawn. “Nope.”

Huntley grabbed a chair and sank into it.
“She’s hiding. Can you believe that?
Three
days before the
wedding and she’s hiding.”

“Can’t blame her. She met your parents.”

“Shit.” Huntley buried his face in his hands.
“I’m so screwed.”

“Mm-hmmm,” Miles said, mouth full.

“She was kind of upset with me after lunch.
We were with my parents at the restaurant, and it wasn’t great but
nothing bad really happened, I thought. It was quiet. You know how
my mother gets when she’s trying to punish me, kind of cold—”

“Calling your mother ‘kind of cold’ is like
calling Fawn ‘kind of pretty.’ She makes a living at it.”

“Yeah, well, so she was kind of extra chilly.
But I thought I cheered Fawn up afterward. You know, the hot tub
and the wet bar, girl stuff—”

Miles nodded grimly, remembering Lucy’s girl
stuff.

“But then she starts crying, right after the
good parts, and I’m like, ‘What the hell?’ I figure it’s just
stress and… you know, it was a long day and I’d just gotten off. I
must have dozed a little.”

“So, she was upset and crying, naked in bed
with you, and you fell asleep.”

“It wasn’t like that!” Huntley cried. “Okay,
but I didn’t mean to. And she took it personally, like I meant to
hurt her intentionally, because when she woke me up later she was
totally pissed. I was in the middle of this nice dream—about
her!—and I realize she’s talking to me about leaving or something,
and before I’m totally awake, she’s gone.”

“You couldn’t find her at her cabin?”

“I wasn’t going to just run after her. I was
practically asleep! And kind of pissed, too, that she would just
start a fight while I was sleeping. It wasn’t really fair.”

Miles pinched the bridge of his nose,
headache at war with laughter. “Dude, you’re fucked. When did you
go and look for her?”

“It doesn’t matter. She’s gone now.”

“Gone?”

“Gone. Cabin’s empty.”

“I thought you said she was hiding, like in
the sauna or something.”

“You think I’d be this freaked out if she was
still here at the resort?” Huntley helped himself to Miles’s glass,
took a mouthful. “She packed up. Clothes, bags, everything—cabin’s
empty.”

“Empty?” Miles felt his stomach drop. “How
about Lucy?”

“Oh, her clothes are still there.” Huntley
rolled his baby blue eyes. “But she’s not. I assume she’s with
Fawn. Probably was jealous of her all along, getting married and
being the pretty one and everything.”

“Excuse me?”

Huntley drew back, apparently surprised by
his tone. A sheepish look came over his face. “Fawn told me she got
dumped by her own fiancé. Maybe she’s bitter.” He caught Miles’s
eye. “You know all about that.”

“Lucy’s been a hell of a lot more loyal than
you have.” Miles shoved a crusty piece of sourdough baguette in his
mouth. “And she’s prettier, too.”

Huntley stared. “Interesting.”

“You want to blame somebody, blame yourself.
Even your parents are just trying to look out for you.” Miles
looked at his watch. Lucy didn’t have a car and it was too late to
rent one, even in Fort Bragg. And since it was unlikely anyone
would drive her all the way back to the Bay Area, she couldn’t have
gotten far unless— “Are her other friends still here? Krista and
the one with green hair?”

“Krista took Fawn’s mother to Mendocino for
shopping and chow hours ago.”

“So Fawn might have tried to meet up with
them?”

Face lighting up, Huntley popped back up to
his feet. “Of course!” He pulled out his cell. “I have to give some
story to my parents before they suspect anything. I’ll meet
you—”

“Find her yourself. Show her you’re serious.”
Frowning at the glass Huntley had stolen, Miles dumped his napkin
on the table.

“Serious? Would I be going through all of
this with my parents if I weren’t? I’m going to marry her!”

“If she’ll have you. Your parents showed her
how they felt about her, which wasn’t good. You didn’t say
shit.”

“They just don’t know her yet. And this isn’t
going to help.” Huntley shook his head. “I’ll book them for a mud
treatment in the morning, just in case. That’ll buy me a few more
hours.”

Miles got up from the table and nodded his
thanks to the waiter. Grateful for the two hours of service and the
free food, he left a twenty for a tip before following his pathetic
friend out of the restaurant. “You worry too much about what they
think and not enough about what Fawn thinks,” Miles said. “And she
noticed.”

But Huntley, already sucking up to his
parents on the other line, wasn’t listening.

Miles walked back to his cabin with the
annoying realization that he was going to help him out because he
didn’t want to risk letting Lucy get away just yet.

* * *

In the end, they decided to search for them
separately—Miles on his bike and Huntley in a car, splitting up at
the coast to search a wider area. B&Bs and restaurants littered
the rocky coastline along Highway 1, and Miles was pessimistic that
they would be able to find them without more information.

Miles went to Fort Bragg, a real city with
more services, not just a gourmet ghetto for tourists, but he
didn’t have a clue what he was supposed to be looking for. Krista
drove an old Subaru, they’d learned. That would stick out about as
well as a Ford pickup. Or a blue Prius.

Miles wondered what Lucy drove. Something
black, he bet. Small and black—a VW or a Japanese hatchback,
nothing expensive, something practical. Something he wouldn’t fit
in.

He wanted her. He wanted to find her, wanted
to hold her.

Damn it.

Why didn’t Huntley ask Alex to go look for
them? They could have turned it into a nice little four-way.

Alex. Miles didn’t blame her for holding out
for her dream guy, the one sticking out his ankle for the ball and
chain with a smile, but Alex was not the one. She knew that. She
had to know that.

Huntley reached him on his cell when he was
getting gas. “Score!” Huntley cried into his ear. “Pajaro!”

“You found them?”

“I found their ride. A yoga instructor at the
spa called in with the manager. With Fawn’s friend with the green
hair,” Miles said. “They’re in Pajaro!”

“Where the fuck is that?”

As it happened, it was only a few miles south
from where Miles was getting gas, a tiny town with a B&B and a
view and not much else. Miles followed Huntley’s directions and
parked in front of the run-down Victorian hugging the cliff,
wondering if he should wait for Huntley.

Nah.

He wouldn’t touch her again. She’d have to
come to him this time. If he backed off, she’d face the reality of
Alex’s utter unattractiveness just in time to find Miles there
ready to console her.

He heard a happy crowd—big for a
Wednesday—coming from the large bar on the ocean side of the
building and wondered what game was on. He’d been in other bars
like it up here, local hot spots, usually filled with fishermen and
service workers on their nights off, and it did sound busy.
Shouting and laughter, loud music, women squealing. Not the kind of
place he’d expect to appeal to two unlucky-in-love city girls on
their own.

There was a game on the big screen over the
bar but nobody was watching it. Instead, two dozen burly men and a
matching set of burly women stared at a short, bright-eyed, very
loud redhead perched on top of the bar belting out a song and
slapping something metal against her knee. Spoons, Miles realized.
Sitting next to her on the bar, a very tall, lanky blonde was
refilling a pint glass from the tap herself while the bartender
grinned and clapped his hands to the beat. The beat of the spoons,
which Lucy slapped like a horse’s gallop along her thigh.

Nobody spared Miles a glance. He froze, too
surprised to move, and tried to absorb what he was seeing. And
hearing.

“Come on, Lucy,” a woman’s voice yelled out.
“Sing that Irish one again. The one that made Jake cry!”

Lucy shook her head, making her bright curls
bounce, and sang something folksy about “ain’t a gonna be feelin’
that way no more.” Fawn held out the refilled pint glass to her,
and Lucy bent over to give the spoons one last, frenzied flourish
before tossing them aside and grabbing the beer. The crowd broke
out into applause. Lucy laughed, stood up on the bar, and bowed,
beer foam on her upper lip.

A brown-haired guy in an orange Giants
sweatshirt tugged on her leg, no doubt annoyed to have her feet
near his plate of fries, but when she climbed down, he hooked an
arm around her waist and hauled her into his lap.

Whoa there, buddy.
Lucy was obviously
too drunk to fight him off. Maybe she didn’t even realize why her
bar stool had gotten so well-padded.